Scholarship, Learning, Being Alone, Being Together

I wrote this a few weeks ago but didn't post it. Here goes.

I am still finding it very hard to spend time by myself. I feel this anxious, gnawing almost painful sensation in my gut and I can't sit still. I am trying to finish writing my research proposal but as I write I can barely suppress the urge to leap up, engage in some other activity. I can't easily sustain the concentration and focus I need in order to complete this and thus be free to do the next thing.

At the core of this anxiety is my deeply fractured understanding of what it is to learn, to research, to teach. Learning has always been so important to me. Yet somehow I have come to believe that it has no or little value. Despite the fact that I am a scholar and that the vast majority of my scholarship has been self-directed or has occurred within spaces outside the traditional academy I am driven by this feeling of uselessness. As if all of this endeavour has been essentially a waste of my time. As if I would only be a valuable human being if I gave up on theory and devoted myself to more 'practical' matters.

It isn't like I don't have help in this regard. Learning, scholarship, theory, critical reflection are typically devalued in our culture. What is more, they are often devalued in activist culture as well. 'Theory' is often labeled as ineffective or less valuable than practice. I was having a conversation the other day with some homelessness activists in a park in Shibuya. When talking about autonomist theory and in particular Hardt and Negri's work with one of them I found it almost dismissed. The living, powerful example of the work going on around us, the creation of a space for homeless people living in Shibuya to come together, sing karaoke, enjoy the warmth of a fire and have dinner together a self-evident reflection of the impotence of theory. And yet if I accept this then I am essentially allowing much of my own political practice, a practice which has always involved extensive theoretical reflection, to be counted as next to worthless.

I have experienced a great deal of practical political activity which was, in my opinion, insufficiently reflexive. Insufficiently theorised and hence though giving the outward appearance of great activity appeared to me impotent or simply spectacular.

I think that part of my anxiety stems from my reluctance to label myself as a scholar. Yet my own practice is largely consistent with such a label. I think in part this is because I want to refuse fixed identities. Yes I am a scholar, but I am also a cook, a lover, a doer of dishes and laundary, a sweeper of floors and a dancer of dances. I am currently a teacher of English and I have been many things in terms of paid work. Here too, the problem. Resistance to work means that I can't engage fully in the identity offered by paid employment. I always want to refuse the label 'I'm an English teacher' but in doing so I constantly tear open the fabric of my own identity. This is where the concept of subjectivity has been proving more and more powerful to me lately.

I struggle a lot with being on my own. In order to do sustained writing or reading of any time it is necessary to have a degree of space and time. Yet when I am alone the feelings of anxiety, alienation and restlessness bubble up and overflow, destroying my concentration and driving me hither and thither. Then, when I do manage to achieve something, like a piece of writing or a blog post, or finish some reading I attack myself for not having done more. This self-destructive cycle is really frustrating. Especially when I can recognise almost all the elements of the cycle but feel powerless to change it.